Naples, Day one

Naples  December 26, 2018

The trip over was uneventful but long.  There are no nonstop flights from the USA to Naples, so you have to change planes somewhere in Europe; we changed in Paris.  The flight from Paris to Naples on Christmas day was incredibly beautiful, over the Alps:

  

Our hotel is in the old city in a very old building.  The door is remarkable:

There’s an ancient elevator which holds only two people and doesn’t quite stop at the floor—it’s either a few inches up or down depending on the day’s whimsy.  We took a long nap on Christmas afternoon, found a small café open and had a pasta dinner, and returned to the hotel to sleep the night.  After breakfast this morning we left the hotel, and in the adjacent square was a group of musicians entertaining the huge crowd of people out for a stroll.  Click the arrow:

 We began walking to Via San Gregorio Armeneo, where we found what seemed to be all of Naples, coming to the “Street of Cribs” to see all the small statues created there by the local craftspeople.  The crowd trying to walk the street was so dense that there was no personal space, and we went at the pace of the crowd, as there was no option.  That was about two feet per minute:

But the shops and the art were remarkable!  Everyone who is anyone was there:

Leaving San Gregorio Armeneo, we found our way to the Church of Pio Monte della Misericordia, which houses, according to our guidebook, “The most unforgettable painting in Naples,” Caravaggio’s Seven Acts of Mercy.  The church itself is unremarkable, but the painting, located above the altar in a chapel, is:

Our guidebook has two pages on this one paining!  It is quite amazing.  One of the seven acts of mercy is a starving man suckling at the breast of a woman.  It made me wonder if Steinbeck was aware of this portrayal:

We then walked to the National Archeological Museum, described in our guidebook as “the single most important and remarkable museum of Greco-Roman antiquities in the world (in spite of itself).”  We didn’t know what that snarky comment meant, but we soon found out.  Naples has no money to keep up museums.  About half of the rooms in the museum are empty and closed.  Some of the rooms are filled with treasures poorly displayed and lit.  Here’s one room with only two working lights in the track lighting above a row of fabulous busts, none of which are lit as the two which are working are not aimed at the art:

There seem to be no guards, at least we saw none, and we did see a couple taking a selfie with a gorgeous Roman bust.  BUT, the collection which was on display was amazing, and some was well-lit and well-labeled; some was well-lit and poorly labeled or not labeled at all.  I’ll post just a small selection, most of which came from the ruins of Pompeii and some from Herculaneum.  Here’s a beautiful Athena:

A magnificent silver chalice:

A cameo vase:

A 2000-year old loaf of bread:

This requires some investigation—a statue of Zeus Amun!  The meager description said that the ram was sacred to Egyptian Amun, and that this is an image of Zeus Amun:

Finally, there was an oil lamp with a menorah:

We then had our first Neapolitan pizza, with a salad, for a late lunch (3:30 PM—but we were not alone)  and we’re back at the hotel for a short rest before our recital of traditional Neapolitan song which starts on the early side—9:00 PM.  I guess we’ll have dinner after that.  More when I can.